


Distraction

by CantStopImagining



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Crack, F/F, Fluff, garbage, this fic has the word quesadilla in it 31 times do with that what you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 18:42:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8338549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: Erin’s seen some pretty weird stuff since moving up to Holtzmann’s lab, but this might take the prize.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is honestly the biggest pile of garbage I have ever written and you're welcome. Dedicated to Tiff and Soph for being the worst enablers on earth.

It's a cool Friday morning in March. It’s been a quiet week, with only one ghost sighting reported, which turned out to be a hoax, but the team are so wrapped up in other projects that it’s kind of a relief. They’ve been a team for long enough that they’re enjoying the easy silences that fall between them. They each have their work areas, and though they enjoy each other’s company, sometimes the seclusion of their own private desks is a welcoming change. For the past few days, Erin and Patty have been working their way through the huge pile of paperwork sent across from the mayor’s office, whilst Abby and Holtzmann work on tech up on the second floor. 

Today, however, Erin’s back at her desk in the corner of Holtzmann’s lab, for the first time in almost a week. It’s comforting, being surrounded by her own belongings, knowing where everything is - something she’s really come to appreciate after the mess of Abby’s desk downstairs - the sound of Holtzmann tinkering away with machinery across the room creating the perfect soundtrack for her editing process. Her latest paper is making slow but steady progress.

Erin glances at the time in the corner of her computer screen and sighs softly. It’s too early for lunch, but she’d skipped breakfast this morning, and her stomach is grumbling. She wonders, briefly, whether there’s anything in the kitchen besides left over take out and tubes of chips. She doubts it.

 _Another half an hour’s work, and then you can go get a muffin,_ she tells herself, stretching her limbs, and returning to her word document.

But she’s only read over one sentence when she’s interrupted.

“Would you like a mini quesadilla?”

Erin starts at the unfamiliar, unexpected voice, and frowns when she can’t find the source. She glances across at Holtzmann’s desk, which is suspiciously empty.

“Would you like an ooey-gooey yummy quesadilla?”

“Uh… hello?” Erin says, continuing to search for where the voice is coming from. She leans across the desk and looks down, and then she sees it. A small white robot, far more polished than Holtzmann’s creations usually are, holding a tray.

Erin’s seen some pretty weird stuff since moving up to Holtzmann’s lab, but this might take the prize.

“I, um… what is this Holtzmann?” she calls, looking around for the engineer, who she suspects is somewhere with some kind of remote controller.

“Would you like an ooey-gooey yummy yummy delicious quesadilla?” the robot repeats.

Erin’s stomach rumbles in reply.

“I… yes, okay.”

She tentatively takes a snack from the small tray, and as soon as her fingers have wrapped around it, the robot zooms off in the other direction. Erin frowns, lifting the quesadilla to her face and sniffing. It doesn’t _smell_ radioactive, but with Holtzmann, you can never be sure. Taking a bite, she almost immediately regrets it, almost choking on the tiny mouthful.

“Yummy yummy is not what I’d use to describe this,” she mumbles, tossing it into the trash.

They get called away to a particularly rough bust, and Erin mostly forgets about the robot.

Until, Monday that is.

It’s seven thirty in the morning when she settles into her office chair, cup of coffee steaming beside her, and opens her computer. The Firehouse is quiet. Erin’s often the first person into work, unable to sleep for more than a few hours when she has work to finish. It’s not unusual, though she has found that working in silence doesn’t come easily to her any more. She’s grown accustomed to the individual sounds of her team mates, enjoys the background noise.

After about ten minutes of not really getting anything productive done, Erin hears a whirring noise and looks up from her work. It’s only as it gets closer, and louder, that she identifies the sound.

“Would you like a quesadilla?”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Erin shakes her head, looking around, “Holtzmann?”

The only response is from the robot, offering the snack to her again. Erin feels ridiculous addressing what is essentially a pile of metal parts, so she calls for Holtzmann again.

No response.

“Would you like an ooey-gooey delicious mini quesadilla?”

Erin grits her teeth. She’s not talking to a robot. It doesn’t even have ears.

“Would you like a cheesy toasty quesadilla?”

“It’s 8 o’clock in the morning, so, no, thank you,” she eventually says, annoyed. It doesn’t count if she doesn’t look at it, right?

“Would you like an ooey-gooey cheesy mmm delicious quesadilla?”

Remembering that the stupid robot went away as soon as she took one the day before, Erin groans. She rolls her eyes, takes the quesadilla from the tray held out to her, and forces a smile. The robot spins in a circle, and then scoots off.

“Great,” Erin mumbles. The trash can that usually lives beside her desk isn’t there now. She glances around for somewhere else to stash the unwanted food, before giving up and opening the top drawer of her desk, stuffing it inside.

For the next fifteen minutes, she works in silence, the only sound the tapping of her fingers against the keys of her keyboard. She reaches for her coffee cup, but it’s empty. That’s okay - as soon as she gets this paragraph out, she can go get a refill. There’s no point in stopping now, because she’ll lose her train of thought, and the deadline for this particular journal is looming in the not-so-distant-distance, and she doesn’t want to miss it.

“Would you like a quesadilla?”

Erin’s head snaps up from her computer and she narrows her eyes at the robot. Before it can ask again, she takes the snack from its tray, opens her top drawer, and tosses it in without looking. She closes the drawer, returning to her work.

“Thanks,” she mumbles, then shakes her head; she’s finally losing it. She’s talking to a robot.

Erin’s deeply ensconced in her work so she doesn’t hear the Firehouse door open and close, completely tunes out Abby calling up the stairs for her. Her coffee cup remains empty, as she flies through paragraph after paragraph, concentrating on nothing but her computer screen, blocking out every sound and movement around her. Finally, when her eyes are blurring from staring at words for too long, she pulls away from the computer. She rubs at her eyes, unfolding herself from her desk chair. 

“Would you like an ooey-gooey yummy yummy quesadilla?”

Erin groans. She looks across the room at Holtzmann - who she hadn’t even notice arrive - but she’s working away on one of the proton packs, welding mask pulled down over her face, blow torch in hand. Erin’s getting irritated with this by now, but even that doesn’t make her want to break health and safety protocols - she’s seen first hand what happens when you distract Holtzmann when she’s holding a blow torch.

“Would you like an—-“

“Yes, thank you,” she tells the robot, snatching the food. It spins around happily, and waddles back across the room, disappearing out the back. 

The quesadilla is thrown into the stash of them that’s growing in Erin’s desk, and she returns to work. Only when she reaches for her coffee mug for the fifth time does she remember that she was going to go put coffee on. Reluctantly, she leaves her seat, and heads downstairs.

“Ah, she lives!” Abby says, as Erin passes her desk.

“Morning, Abs.”

“Looks like someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning,” Abby observes, cocking her head, “everything okay?”

Erin frowns, “yeah, I’m fine. Great, actually - I’m ploughing through this paper.”

“Okay, just don’t forget to eat, alright?” Abby says in her best mom voice, and Erin fights the urge to roll her eyes at her, offers her a smile instead.

Then it clicks into place.

“Wait… did you tell Holtzmann to make sure I ate?”

Frowning, Abby shakes her head slowly, “no? I don’t think so? It would be counterproductive - I’ve seen her go for days on nothing but potato chips. Why?”

“I…” Erin shrugs, heading towards the kitchen, “nevermind, it’s nothing. I’m going to put some coffee on - want a cup?”

“Sure,” Abby smiles, though her brow is still wrinkled in concern.

By the time Erin gets back to her desk, Holtzmann has disappeared. This is minimally annoying, as Erin was hoping to get to the bottom of the quesadilla thing, or at least tell Holtz to knock it off. Erin settles into her desk chair, and returns to her work, but it isn’t for long. 

“Y’ALL WE GOT A GHOST IN QUEENS - LETS GO”

-

They emerge from the bust starving, and Patty suggests that, since they’re slime-free for once, they go out for lunch. With no real opinion on where they go for food, Erin tunes out of the conversation, only snapping back into it when she hears Holtzmann suggest Mexican.

“Okay, I hate Mexican food,” Erin says, irritated, “and Abby, you know that, so please would you tell Holtzmann to knock it off?”

Holtz tilts her head, feigning innocence, “knock what off?”

“You know! The quesadillas! It’s driving me insane.”

Abby twists around in the passenger seat, “what are you talking about? What quesadillas? There’s quesadillas?”

“Okay, now I want a quesadilla,” Patty agrees, frowning.

“Ha ha, very funny. Nice joke. Holtz, please?”

Holtzmann frowns, looking genuinely confused. She lifts a hand to Erin’s face, and presses the back to her forehead, before Erin pushes it away. For the first time, she considers that Holtzmann might genuinely be innocent, but the thought only lingers for half a second, despite the fact she’s maintained a straight face throughout this charade. 

“Okay well all I’m getting from this is that Erin does not want Mexican,” Abby says, “any objections to Japanese?”

Everyone agrees, and Patty takes off in the direction of their favourite Japanese place, leaving Holtzmann continuing to silently scrutinise Erin on the backseat.

-

The quesadilla robot does not appear for the next three days. Erin’s beginning to wonder if she made it up. 

She works away at her paper, finally sending a draft copy to Abby to look over. Anxious over submitting it, Erin distracts herself by helping Holtzmann with a containment unit she’s working on. Well, she’s probably more hindrance than she is help, but Holtzmann doesn’t say as much. Erin feels herself relaxing just spending time around the engineer, watching her skilled hands at work on the machinery, listening to her babble about everything from inventions, to a movie she watched on cable ten years ago.

“Okay, Erin, we’re almost done here,” Holtzmann says, grinning up at her, that grin that always makes Erin’s stomach do flips.

 _We_ isn’t entirely accurate, she thinks.

“Could you do me a favour and just…” she dumps the whole unit, including the tangle of wires hanging from the underneath, into Erin’s hands, “hold this steady whilst I….”

Erin’s whole body goes stiff as she tries her best to hold still, “some warning might have been nice,” she grits out, watching as Holtzmann carefully peels apart wires, feeding them through the tubing one by one, muttering the colours under her breath.

“And we’re good!” she exclaims, punching the air. She grabs the unit from Erin and puts it down on the work bench.

“You could have done that on the bench; you didn’t need me to hold it,” Erin accuses.

Holtz shrugs, “you wanted to help.”

Erin rolls her eyes, but she’s secretly grateful for Holtzmann entertaining her need to be distracted. She glances at her watch, “shoot, we worked through lunch.”

“Any time is lunch time. Ah the life of the self-employed,” Holtzmann tells her, swinging her legs up onto the bench, boot-clad feet dangerously close to the unit they just finished.

“Do you want to… head out and get something?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, I could grab you something if you have stuff to do here…” Erin quickly adds, feeling awkward.

Holtz smiles, “how do grilled cheeses sound?”

“Great, actually,” Erin says.

“Huh, I’d have said more like…” Holtzmann does an impression of a grilled cheese sizzling in a pan, and Erin laughs despite how stupid it is, feeling a warmth in the pit of her stomach at the pleased expression on Holtzmann’s face at having made her laugh. 

She’s seeing that more and more lately.

“Neato-burrito, I’ll grab my jacket,” Holtz says, shedding her lab coat - a lab coat in as much as she wears it in the lab - and tossing a peanut (where on earth did she get a peanut?!) into the air, catching it in her mouth expertly.

Erin is so focussed on Holtzmann’s movements that the words don’t register right away, but then they do, and she groans, remembering the damn quesadillas.

But then Holtzmann is grabbing her hand, and it’s completely forgotten.

-

At the end of the week, Erin opens the top drawer of her desk to get her stash of spare staples, and discovers a heap of old quesadillas. She gags, closing the drawer as quickly as she can, resolving to sort that mess out later.

-

The paper is submitted. That doesn’t mean she’s any less anxious, though. In fact, the waiting game is the worst part. This is the first time she’s dipped her toe into academia since being fired from Columbia, and whilst the team’s work has been rewarded with various acclamations, a part of her is still convinced that her old peers are still going to rip her to shreds. Even though she knows, logically, that very few people will find out if her paper is rejected, she can’t help but know she’ll be humiliated if that happens.

Fortunately, New York City and the spirit world seem to understand her need to be distracted. Between filling out paperwork, doing interviews (they unanimously decide to leave those to Patty), and new ghost sightings being called in throughout the day, the team don’t have much time to rest. Holtzmann is a weapon building machine, and busts run smoother and smoother as they get more and more field time under their belts. The new containment unit works like a dream, holding up to five class threes or bellow at a time. The eventual idea is to study them, as Abby and Erin had initially planned all those years ago. The transparent containment unit needed for this is still very much a future endeavour, though.

When there’s a lull in activity, it is welcomed by the whole team, besides Erin. Erin sits at her desk, routinely refreshing her emails page, and pretending to work on a new theory, though in reality the word document remains blank. The others are downstairs. She hears the buzz of conversation, but it’s too far away to make out words and she’s too focussed on her computer screen. Abby has already called up for her twice, offered beer and pizza, but Erin’s made excuses. It’s barely 3pm - the afternoon is still young.

She’s so focussed on her computer screen that when a familiar voice pulls her out of her reverie, she almost jump out of her seat.

“Would you like an ooey-gooey yummy quesadilla?”

Erin looks at the robot in despair. She had practically forgotten about it with everything else going on, and still had no explanation for its existence, despite badgering the rest of the team about it. It was clearly a Holtzmann invention, but the blonde was still denying all knowledge.  
 Sighing, Erin takes a quesadilla from the tray, opening the second drawer and stuffing it in. She looks back at her computer screen.

A moment later, she’s interrupted again.

“Would you like an ooey-gooey yummy cheesy toasty quesadilla?”

She takes another one without really looking. It joins the first one in the drawer.

Erin refreshes her emails. She checks her junk mail. She goes back to the word document, fingers hovering over keys, but not typing. She reopens her emails and refreshes them again.

“Would you like an mmm delicious yummy yummy cheesy quesadilla?”

“Really?” Erin says, aloud, to nobody. She takes a quesadilla from the tray and stuffs it in the drawer.

She can still hear voices downstairs, the faint hum of the television. She clicks through to her junk mail. Nothing.

“Would you like an ooey-gooey yummy mmm delicious toasty cheesy mini quesadilla?”

Erin spins in her seat and stares down the robot, “okay. No. I have had enough of this. I don’t want your quesadillas. They taste awful and I hate Mexican food.”

“Would you like a—-“

“I DON’T WANT YOUR QUESADILLAS. I SAID NO.”

“Would you—-“

Erin finally snaps, jumping up from her seat and going to the top of the stairs, hollering: “Holtzmann if you don’t deprogram this thing I swear to god… I’ll… I’ll throw it out of the window.”

She’s met by laughter downstairs, which only serves to make her more annoyed. The quesadilla robot is spinning around her, continuously asking her if she wants a snack, and she feels like her head might explode.

“Wait, wait, who had six?” she hears from downstairs.

“Man, I thought she’d have snapped days ago.”

“I told you, I know Erin…”

Erin marches down the stairs, the robot hot on her tail, but faltering at the first step, standing there staring at her and asking about its quesadillas. Erin grabs Holtzmann by the overall straps.

“Abigail,” Holtzmann says hoarsely, “your money’s in my left pocket, please feel free to take it from my corpse.”

Erin relents, letting go of her, feeling embarrassed by her sudden surge of violence. She stares between her friends - Abby happily counting dollar bills, Patty staring at her, Holtzmann looking sheepish - and she groans.

“I hate you all.”

“No you don’t,” Abby reminds her.

She rolls her eyes, “no, I don’t.”

-

The email arrives the following day and Erin practically jumps out of her seat, clapping her hands together and punching the air. Holtzmann’s watching her from across the room, a soft smile on her face.

“It got accepted then?”

Erin nods, happily, still dancing with her hands.

-

A month later, Erin and Holtzmann are kind of sort of really definitely almost an item.

If an item is defined by the fact Holtzmann hasn’t slept in her own bed in two weeks.

There was no eureka moment, no sudden feelings; they fell together naturally, an accidental kiss on the roof, noses bumping, teeth colliding, and then into bed the following night. It had been stirring somewhere between them for weeks, the tension building and building until one of them had to snap. Inevitable.

Erin’s somewhere drifting between asleep and awake, her eyelashes fluttering as Holtzmann kisses along her neck, drawing her out of slumber by awakening every nerve ending. It’s Sunday, and the sun is filtering through the open blinds across the room, and Holtzmann’s hair is soft against her jaw, and it’s almost perfect. She’s never been happier than in this moment, she thinks, softly smiling, enjoying the warmth of Holtzmann’s body pressed firmly against hers.

“Hey, Erin,” Holtz says somewhere close to her ear. Her lips nip at the soft flesh there, and her breath is warm.  
 Erin doesn’t open her eyes, “mmmm?”

“Would you like an ooey-gooey yummy quesadilla?” 

Erin snaps awake, pushing Holtzmann so hard she almost falls off the bed.

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

Erin groans, “no, I don’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Will I ever stop quoting this SNL sketch? Probably not.


End file.
